


True Love

by Truth



Category: Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-18
Updated: 2006-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-14 06:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a half-hour writing challenge. Twenty minutes and mostly unedited. Overall rating: PG-13</p><p>Challenge presented: Mr. Universe and the art of "Can't Stop the Signal"</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Love

People just didn’t understand.

It had taken a fortune, several fortunes, to build his dream. He’d started there, a spoiled brat with a dream, and become Mr. _Universe_. Even the name was more than it seemed and he knew that he was acting like a spoiled child and gloried in that, too.

If it wasn’t fun, you shouldn’t do it.

It didn’t matter that people didn’t understand and he pitied them, a little, because they saw only the bits and pieces. They could never hope to understand because he was the only one who saw it _all_.

The Signal had whispered to him when he was a small child, staring up at the stars and feeling so horribly, desolately alone. She had wrapped herself around him, murmuring that _she_ would always be there for him – that _she_ would connect him to all the others, let him see and hear and touch them in ways they’d never know.

When he was seventeen, he’d decided that he was just a pervert with a fetish that encompassed every other person in all of creation. He’d been okay with that. Sex was fun and all, but the Signal was his real passion, and he’d been trying to reach back to her, to truly feel her embrace, for over a decade.

If you had enough money you could do anything.

That was another falsehood. Money made it easier, but if you didn’t have communication, if you didn’t have information, you had _nothing_. It took him almost another decade to construct the ultimate sex toy and find a place to hide it. If you were going to screw the universe, long and slow, you wanted a little privacy for it, after all. This wasn’t cheap exhibitionism – it was true love.

The lovebot was almost an afterthought, an excuse to give the Signal a face he could see when he talked to her. People didn’t understand that, either, but that was all right too. There were some things that just had to be accepted. Geniuses were allowed their little quirks and eccentricities.

It took a special sort of mind to understand the Signal, to follow the tangled threads, to watch all the disparate bits and pieces and put together what was really happening out of what people _thought_ was going on. Mr. Universe was more than a little mad and he knew it, gloried in it, shared it with a wild grin and an expansive gesture.

It wasn’t voyeurism, however. Well, not entirely. To watch without touching, without being able to interact - that would be almost necrophilia, and Mr. Universe’s beautiful mistress was entirely alive. You had to touch the Signal, had to hear it with every fibre of your being… and anything you touched, you changed. It had bothered him a little, at first. Changing the Signal…? He’d decided in the end that everything evolves and that had eased his worries somewhat.

… but touching meant allowing yourself to be touched in return and, eventually, Mr. Universe had to accept that his mistress whispered to others as well. Being the generous sort, once he’d accepted it, he’d started looking for her other lovers – not that a gentleman was _supposed_ to kiss and tell, but he was no gentleman.

People were almost as fascinating as the misinformation they produced and Mr. Universe watched _them_ , finding the rare ones who moved past the lies and half-truths to touch the elusive Signal themselves… and occasionally touching them back.

It wasn’t any fun to be the world’s greatest and most perverse genius without being able to share yourself with others, right?

His great love, however, remained the Signal herself, the information she carried and the power that fueled her. She was truth and beauty, justice and hope, cruelty and desire…. He’d devoted his life to her, to her perpetuation and the appreciation of her glory.

You couldn’t stop the Signal. He’d seen to that. The best you could do was wrap yourself around her and hang on for the ride.

… and what a wild ride it had been….

“Mal….”

The truth would always come out.

“… shot me, Mal….”

She’d find another lover, though never one as much fun, he was _sure_ of that.

“… can’t stop the Signal.”

No one could.


End file.
